H. B. Barnum, a 14-year-old saxophone player who later became amusic producer, was one of many teenagers in the 1950s drawn to anew style of music that featured hard-driving African-Americanrhythm and blues. Barnum described the first time he saw therhythm-and-blues performer Richard Wayne Penniman, betterknown as Little Richard.

A PERSONAL VOICE H. B. BARNUM

“ He’d just burst onto the stage from anywhere, and you wouldn’t be able to hear anything but the roar of the audience.. . . He’d be on the stage, he’d be off the stage, he’d be jumpingand yelling, screaming, whipping the audience on. . . . Then whenhe finally did hit the piano and just went into di-di-di-di-di-di-di, youknow, well nobody can do that as fast as Richard. It just took everybody by surprise.”

—quoted in The Rise and Fall of Popular Music

Born poor, Little Richard wore flashy clothes on stage, curled hishair, and shouted the lyrics to his songs. As one writer observed, “In two minutes [he] used as much energy as an all-night party.”The music he and others performed became a prominent part ofthe American culture in the 1950s, a time when both mainstreamAmerica and those outside it embraced new and innovative formsof entertainment.

New Era of the Mass MediaCompared with other mass media—means of communication that reach largeaudiences—television developed with lightning speed. First widely available in1948, television had reached 9 percent of American homes by 1950 and 55 per-cent of homes by 1954. In 1960, almost 90 percent—45 million—of Americanhomes had television sets. Clearly, TV was the entertainment and informationmarvel of the postwar years.

652 CHAPTER 19

Terms & NamesTerms & NamesMAIN IDEAMAIN IDEA

One American's Story

Popular Culture

•mass media•FederalCommunicationsCommission(FCC)

•beat movement•rock ‘n’ roll•jazz

Mainstream Americans,as well as the nation’ssubcultures, embraced new forms of entertainmentduring the 1950s.

Television and rock ‘n’ roll,integral parts of the nation’sculture today, emerged duringthe postwar era.

WHY IT MATTERS NOWWHY IT MATTERS NOW

▼

Little Richard helped change rhythmand blues into a new musicalgenre—rock ‘n’ roll.

A

THE RISE OF TELEVISION Early television sets weresmall boxes with round screens. Programming was meager,and broadcasts were in black and white. The first regularbroadcasts, beginning in 1949, reached only a small part ofthe East Coast and offered only two hours of programs perweek. Post–World War II innovations such as microwaverelays, which could transmit television waves over longdistances, sent the television industry soaring. By 1956, theFederal Communications Commission (FCC)—thegovernment agency that regulates and licenses television,telephone, telegraph, radio, and other communicationsindustries—had allowed 500 new stations to broadcast.

This period of rapid expansion was the “golden age”of television entertainment—and entertainment in the1950s often meant comedy. Milton Berle attracted hugeaudiences with The Texaco Star Theater, and Lucille Balland Desi Arnaz’s early situation comedy, I Love Lucy, beganits enormously popular run in 1951.

At the same time, veteran radio broadcaster Edward R.Murrow introduced two innovations: on-the-scene newsreporting, with his program, See It Now (1951–1958), andinterviewing, with Person to Person (1953–1960). Westerns,sports events, and original dramas shown on Playhouse 90and Studio One offered entertainment variety. Children’sprograms, such as The Mickey Mouse Club and The HowdyDoody Show, attracted loyal young fans.

American businesses took advantage of the opportu-nities offered by the new television industry. Advertisingexpenditures on TV, which were $170 million in 1950,reached nearly $2 billion in 1960.

Sales of TV Guide, introduced in 1953, quickly out-paced sales of other magazines. In 1954, the food industryintroduced a new convenience item, the frozen TV dinner.Complete, ready-to-heat individual meals on disposablealuminum trays, TV dinners made it easy for people to eatwithout missing their favorite shows.

SPOTLIGHTSPOTLIGHTHISTORICALHISTORICAL

TV QUIZ SHOWS

Beginning with The $64,000Question in 1955, television cre-ated hit quiz shows by adopting apopular format from radio andadding big cash prizes.

The quiz show Twenty-Onemade a star of a shy English pro-fessor named Charles Van Doren.He rode a wave of fame and for-tune until 1958, when a formercontestant revealed that, toheighten the dramatic impact,producers had been giving someof the contestants the rightanswers.

A scandal followed when a con-gressional subcommittee con-firmed the charges. Most of thequiz shows soon left the air.

Glued to the Set

Households with TV Sets, 1950–2000 Average Daily Hours of TV Viewing, 1950–1999

Mill

ions

of H

ouse

hold

s

Hou

rs p

er D

ay

100

80

60

40

20

0

8

7

6

5

1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000

Source: Nielson Media Research, 2000 Source: Nielson Media Research, 2000

1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000

SKILLBUILDER Interpreting Graphs1. During which decade did the number of households with TV sets increase the most?2. What might account for the drop in TV viewing from 1995–1999?

MAIN IDEAMAIN IDEA

A

AnalyzingEffects

How did theemergence oftelevision affectAmerican culturein the 1950s?

The Postwar Boom 653

STEREOTYPES AND GUNSLINGERS Not everyone wasthrilled with television, though. Critics objected to its effectson children and its stereotypical portrayal of women andminorities. Women did, in fact, appear in stereotypical roles,such as the ideal mothers of Father Knows Best and TheAdventures of Ozzie and Harriet. Male characters outnumberedwomen characters three to one. African Americans and Latinosrarely appeared in television programs at all.

Television in the 1950s portrayed an idealized whiteAmerica. For the most part, it omitted references to poverty,diversity, and contemporary conflicts, such as the struggle ofthe civil rights movement against racial discrimination.Instead, it glorified the historical conflicts of the Western fron-tier in hit shows such as Gunsmoke and Have Gun Will Travel.The level of violence in these popular shows led to ongoing

concerns about the effect of television on children. In 1961, FederalCommunications Commission chairman Newton Minow voiced this concern tothe leaders of the television industry.

A PERSONAL VOICE NEWTON MINOW

“ When television is bad, nothing is worse. I invite you to sit down in front of yourtelevision set when your station goes on the air . . . and keep your eyes glued tothat set until the station signs off. I can assure you that you will observe a vastwasteland.”

—speech to the National Association of Broadcasters, Washington, D.C., May 9, 1961

RADIO AND MOVIES Although TV turned out to be wildly popular, radio andmovies survived. But instead of competing with television’s mass market fordrama and variety shows, radio stations turned to local programming of news,weather, music, and community issues. The strategy paid off. During the decade,radio advertising rose by 35 percent, and the number of radio stations increasedby 50 percent.

From the beginning, television cut into the profitable movie market. In 1948,18,500 movie theaters had drawn nearly 90 million paid admissions per week. Asmore people stayed home to watch TV, the number of moviegoers decreased bynearly half. As early as 1951, producer David Selznick worried about Hollywood:

“It’ll never come back. It’ll just keep on crumbling until finally thewind blows the last studio prop across the sands.”

But Hollywood did not crumble and blow away. Instead, itcapitalized on the advantages that movies still held over tele-

vision—size, color, and stereophonic sound. Stereophonicsound, which surrounded the viewer, was introduced in

1952. By 1954, more than 50 percent of movies were incolor. By contrast, color television, which became avail-

able that year, did not become widespread until the

▼

Lucille Ball had tofight to have herreal-life husband,Cuban-born DesiArnaz, cast in thepopular TV seriesI Love Lucy.

B

▼

James Dean, seenhere in the movieGiant, had aself-confidentindifference thatmade him the idolof teenagers. Hedied in a caraccident atage 24.

Vocabularystereotypical:conventional,formulaic, andoversimplified

MAIN IDEAMAIN IDEA

BEvaluating

Do you thinkthe rise oftelevision had apositive or anegative effect onAmericans?Explain.

C

next decade. In 1953, 20th Century Fox introduced CinemaScope, which pro-jected a wide-angle image on a broad screen. The industry also tried novelty fea-tures: Smell-O-Vision and Aroma-Rama piped smells into the theaters to coincidewith events shown on the screen. Three-dimensional images, viewed through spe-cial glasses supplied by the theaters, appeared to leap into the audience.

A Subculture EmergesAlthough the mass media found a wide audience for their portrayals of mostlywhite popular culture, dissenting voices rang out throughout the 1950s. The mes-sages of the beat movement in literature, and of rock ‘n’ roll in music, clashedwith the tidy suburban view of life and set the stage for the counterculture thatwould burst forth in the late 1960s.

THE BEAT MOVEMENT Centered in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and New YorkCity’s Greenwich Village, the beat movement expressed the social and literarynonconformity of artists, poets, and writers. The word beat originally meant“weary” but came to refer as well to a musical beat.

Followers of this movement, called beats or beatniks, lived nonconformistlives. They tended to shun regular work and sought a higher consciousnessthrough Zen Buddhism, music, and, sometimes, drugs.

Many beat poets and writers believed in imposing as little structure aspossible on their artistic works, which often had a free, open form. Theyread their poetry aloud in coffeehouses and other gathering places. Worksthat capture the essence of this era include Allen Ginsberg’s long, free-verse poem, Howl, published in 1956, and Jack Kerouac’s novel of themovement, On the Road, published in 1957. This novel describes a nomadicsearch across America for authentic experiences, people, and values.

A PERSONAL VOICE JACK KEROUAC

“ [T]he only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad tolive, mad to talk, mad to be saved . . . the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars.”

—On the Road

Many mainstream Americans found this lifestyle less enchanting. Look mag-azine proclaimed, “There’s nothing really new about the beat philosophy. It con-sists merely of the average American’s value scale—turned inside out. The goals ofthe Beat are not watching TV, not wearing gray flannel, not owning a home in thesuburbs, and especially—not working.” Nonetheless, the beatnik attitudes, way oflife, and literature attracted the attention of the media and fired the imaginationsof many college students.

African Americans and Rock ‘n’ Roll While beats expressed themselves in unstructured literature, musicians in the 1950sadded electronic instruments to traditional blues music, creating rhythm and blues.In 1951, a Cleveland, Ohio, radio disc jockey named Alan Freed was among thefirst to play the music. This audience was mostly white but the music usually wasproduced by African-American musicians. Freed’s listeners responded enthusiasti-cally, and Freed began promoting the new music that grew out of rhythm andblues and country and pop. He called the music rock ‘n’ roll, a name that hascome to mean music that’s both black and white—music that is American.

The Postwar Boom 655

D

MAIN IDEAMAIN IDEA

CSummarizing

How did radioand moviesmaintain theirappeal in the1950s?

MAIN IDEAMAIN IDEA

D

AnalyzingCauses

Why do youthink many youngAmericans wereattracted to thebeat movement?

▼

Novelist JackKerouac’s On theRoad, published in1957, sold over500,000 copies.

History ThroughHistory Through

ROCK ‘N’ ROLL In the early and mid-1950s, RichardPenniman, Chuck Berry, Bill Haley and His Comets, and espe-cially Elvis Presley brought rock ‘n’ roll to a frantic pitch ofpopularity among the newly affluent teens who bought theirrecords. The music’s heavy rhythm, simple melodies, andlyrics—featuring love, cars, and the problems of beingyoung—captivated teenagers across the country.

Elvis Presley, the unofficial “King of Rock ‘n’ Roll,” firstdeveloped his musical style by singing in church and listen-ing to gospel, country, and blues music on the radio inMemphis, Tennessee. When he was a young boy, his moth-er gave him a guitar, and years later he paid four dollars ofhis own money to record two songs in 1953. Sam Phillips,

a rhythm-and-blues producer, discovered Presley and produced his first records.In 1955, Phillips sold Presley’s contract to RCA for $35,000.

Presley’s live appearances were immensely popular, and 45 of his records soldover a million copies, including “Heartbreak Hotel,” “Hound Dog,” “All Shook Up,”“Don’t Be Cruel,” and “Burning Love.” Although Look magazine dismissed him as “awild troubadour who wails rock ‘n’ roll tunes, flails erratically at a guitar, and wrig-gles like a peep-show dancer,” Presley’s rebellious style captivated young audiences.Girls screamed and fainted when he performed, and boys tried to imitate him.

Not surprisingly, many adults condemned rock ‘n’ roll. They believed that thenew music would lead to teenage delinquency and immorality. In a few cities,rock ‘n’ roll concerts were banned. But despite this controversy, television andradio exposure helped bring rock ‘n’ roll into the mainstream, and it becamemore acceptable by the end of the decade. Record sales, which were 189 millionin 1950, grew with the popularity of rock ‘n’ roll, reaching 600 million in 1960.

▼

Chuck Berry is asmuch known forhis “duck walk”as for his electricguitar-playingheard on hitrecords including“Johnny B.Goode” and“Maybellene.”

“HOUND DOG”—A ROCK ‘N’ ROLL CROSSOVERFew examples highlight the influence AfricanAmericans had on rock ‘n’ roll—and the lackof credit and compensation they received fortheir efforts—more than the story of WillieMae “Big Mama” Thornton.

In 1953, she recorded and released the song“Hound Dog” to little fanfare. She received amere $500 in royalties. Only three years later,Elvis Presley recorded a version of the tune,which sold millions of records. Despite her con-tributions, Thornton reaped few rewards andstruggled her entire career to make ends meet.

SKILLBUILDERDeveloping Historical Perspective1. Why might black musicians have been

commercially less successful than whitemusicians in the 1950s? Explain.

2. What concerns of the current generationare reflected in today’s popular music?

SEE SKILLBUILDER HANDBOOK, PAGE R11.

▼

Willie Mae “BigMama” Thornton isremembered as thefirst artist to record“Hound Dog.”

Elvis Presley recorded“Hound Dog” in 1956—making it a popular hit.

▼

E

MAIN IDEAMAIN IDEA

E

MakingInferences

Based onElvis Presley’ssong titles, whatdo you think wereteenagers’concerns in the1950s?

656 CHAPTER 19

The Postwar Boom 657

THE RACIAL GAP African-American music had inspired the birth ofrock ‘n’ roll, and many of the genre’s greatest performers were—likeBerry and Penniman—African Americans. In other musical genres,singers Nat “King” Cole and Lena Horne, singer and actor HarryBelafonte, and many others paved the way for minority represen-tation in the entertainment fields. Musicians like Miles Davis, SonnyRollins, Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, and Thelonius Monk played astyle of music characterized by the use of improvisation, called jazz.These artists entertained audiences of all races.

But throughout the 1950s, African-American shows were mostlybroadcast on separate stations. By 1954, there were 250 radio stationsnationwide aimed specifically at African-American listeners. African-American stations were part of radio’s attempt to counter the masspopularity of television by targeting specific audiences. These stationsalso served advertisers who wanted to reach a large African-Americanaudience. But it was the black listeners—who had fewer television sets thanwhites and did not find themselves reflected in mainstream programming—whoappreciated the stations most. Thulani Davis, a poet, journalist, and playwright,expressed the feelings of one listener about African-American radio (or “raceradio” as the character called it) in her novel 1959.

A PERSONAL VOICE THULANI DAVIS

“ Billie Holiday died and I turned twelve on the same hot July day. The saddestsinging in the world was coming out of the radio, race radio that is, the radio of therace. The white stations were on the usual relentless rounds of Pat Boone, TeresaBrewer, and anybody else who couldn’t sing but liked to cover songs that wereonce colored. . . . White radio was at least honest—they knew anybody in theSouth could tell Negro voices from white ones, and so they didn’t play our stuff.”

—1959

At the end of the 1950s, African Americans were still largely segregated fromthe dominant culture. This ongoing segregation—and the racial tensions it fed—would become a powerful force for change in the turbulent 1960s.

MAIN IDEA2. SUMMARIZING

Create a “Who’s Who” chart ofpopular culture idols of the 1950s.Identify the art form and majorachievements associated with eachperson.

Why do you think they appealed tothe young people of the 1950s?

CRITICAL THINKING3. EVALUATING

Do you agree with Newton Minow’sstatement, on page 654, that TVwas “a vast wasteland”? Supportyour answer with details from thetext.

4. ANALYZING EFFECTSHow did radio, TV, and the moviescontribute to the success of rock ‘n’ roll?

5. COMPARING AND CONTRASTING In what ways were the rock ‘n’ rollmusicians and the beat poets of the1950s similar and different?Support your answer with detailsfrom the text. Think About:

• the values the musicians andpoets believed in

• people’s reactions to the musi-cians, poets, and writers

Person Art Form Achievements

▼

InnovativeAmerican jazztrumpeter andcomposer MilesDavis, shownduring a recordingsession in 1959,continued to blazemusical trailsthroughout hiscareer.

•mass media•Federal CommunicationsCommission (FCC)

•beat movement •rock ‘n’ roll •jazz

1. TERMS & NAMES For each term, write a sentence explaining its significance.

658 CHAPTER 19

1950–19601950–1960DAI LY LIFEDAI LY LIFE

The Emergence of the TeenagerLife after World War II brought changes in the family. For the first time, the teenageyears were recognized as an important and unique developmental stage betweenchildhood and adulthood. The booming postwar economy made it possible forteenagers to stay in school instead of working to help support their families, andallowed their parents to give them generous allowances. American business, partic-ularly the music and movie industries, rushed to court this new consumer group.

TEENS AS CONSUMERSComic books, pimple creams,and soft drinks were just afew of the products aimed atteenagers with money tospend.

▼

ROCKING TO A NEW BEATTeenagers seeking a collective identityfound it in rock ‘n’ roll, a fresh form ofmusic that delighted teenagers andenraged their parents. Dick Clark’sAmerican Bandstand (shown at left)showcased young performers playingmusic ranging from doo-wop (shownabove) to hard-driving rhythm and blues.The songs they sang underscoredthemes of alienation and heartbreak.

▼

F I L E

D A T AD A T A

THE TEEN MOVIE SCENETeenagers with money in their pockets often found them-selves at the movies. Hollywood responded by producingfilms especially for teens. Rebel Without a Cause (1955)told the story of a troubled youth driven by anger and fear.It starred teen heart-throbs James Dean and Natalie Wood.

U.S. School Enrollments,1950–1990

Teenagers and Employment,1950–1990

Thou

sand

s of

Teen

ager

sM

illio

ns o

f Tee

nage

rs

Source: Statistical Abstract of the United States, 1995

Source: Statistical Abstract of the United States, 1995

35,000

30,000

25,000

20,000

15,000

10,000

5,000

0

1950 1990

1950 19901960 1970 1980

1960 1970 1980

6

5

4

3

2

Elementary High School College

Males 16–19 years Females 16–19 years

THINKING CRITICALLYTHINKING CRITICALLY

CONNECT TO HISTORY1. Interpreting Data What were some causes of the boom-

ing teenage market in the 1950s? To answer the ques-tion, review the entire feature, including the Data File.

SEE SKILLBUILDER HANDBOOK, PAGE R28.

CONNECT TO TODAY2. Analyzing Movies Today What types of movies do

American studios make for the teenage market today?How do these movies differ from those of the 1950s?

IRESEARCH LINKS CLASSZONE.COM

TEENAGE TIDBITS• A Life magazine survey showed that, during the

1950s, teens spent $20 million on lipstick alone.

• In 1956, a total of 42,000 drive-in movietheaters—heavily frequented by teenagers—took inone-quarter of the year’s total box-office receipts.

• College enrollments more than doubled between1946 and 1960.

• A weekly credit payment for a record player was $1.

The Postwar Boom 659

▼